Tag Archives: Texas Panhandle fires

Death of ‘local news’?

I am going to salute a young man I have known for some time, as we were colleagues in the Texas Panhandle … I worked for the newspaper and he worked for a local broadcast outlet.

Here is what Kelly James posted today: I’m calling it. Time of death for local news was 2/27/2024 at 5pm, 6pm, 9pm and 10pm. While homes were literally being lost to fire in Fritch and surrounding communities, all of the local stations were not doing their jobs. If there’s even a hint of severe weather, their coverage is wall-to-wall. But people actually losing their homes and possibly their lives is not important enough to interrupt Wheel of Fortune or Entertainment Tonight. Before anyone offers any excuses, let me just say, I’ve been there before. It can be done. It just takes guts and integrity to do the job. They should all be embarrassed. I am for them.

Guts and integrity? It doesn’t even require either of those traits. How about a commitment to the craft they chose to pursue?

Kelly James is rightfully angry and indignant, however.

The wildfires in the Texas Panhandle have been astonishing in their scope. Last I heard, a fire that was burning northeast of Amarillo had consumed 300,000 acres of grassland was “zero percent contained!”

I spoke today with a former colleague of mine and she reported that air quality had gone from fair to intolerable. “There were ashes falling from the sky,” she told me. The smoke is burning people’s eyes. I mentioned something about “65 mph wind gusts.” Her response? “They weren’t ‘gusts.’ The wind was constant.”

According to my friend, Kelly James, the TV news outlets were asleep on the job. They were derelict in their duty to report the news to a public that needed to know what in the world is happening to its communities.

James didn’t mention the Globe-News. Hmm. I guess it’s a given that a once-substantial newspaper — that has become a mere shadow of itself — is unable to do the job of reporting local news.

What we have here is the demise of what used to be a staple of every community in the land.

Good bye, local news.

Firefighters showered with love, good wishes

GRASS VALLEY, Calif. — This makeshift sign spoke volumes to my wife and me as we arrived in this small town in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada.

They’re fighting a fire here. It’s not as devastating and tragic as the Santa Rosa fire that is blazing in California’s famed Wine Country near the Pacific Coast. It’s still pretty big.

Residents of Grass Valley and Nevada County have expressed their thanks to the men and women who have come here from far away to battle the fire near Grass Valley.

Children have written the messages. They have offered their own love and blessings and asked for blessings from God. They have urged the firefighters to stay safe to enable a safe return to their own families.

We’ve offered our own expressions of gratitude for what these men and women do. They sign on to protect and to serve. They answer the call. They rush toward the danger, not away from it.

None of this has been lost on the people they are protecting and serving, as my wife and I noticed upon our arrival at an RV park at the Nevada County Fairgrounds, which have become a staging area for roughly 1,000 firefighters who’ve come here to fight Mother Nature’s red-hot wrath.

I’ve seen these men and women do their duty up close back home in the Texas Panhandle, where we’ve lived for more than two decades. Wildfires have ravaged our landscape over the years, too. They have destroyed homes, killed livestock and, yes, taken some human lives too. The firefighters have braved dastardly wind that often sweeps across the High Plains. I salute them every chance I get.

I am doing so again as my wife and I watch these young firefighters prepare to enter the field of battle against the flames.

I am absolutely certain they appreciate the community’s expression of gratitude displayed on that chain-link fence that surrounds their base camp. They are in our thoughts and prayers.